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On Tuesday 06 March 2007 15:30, Paul Johnson <baloo@ursine.ca> was
heard to say:
> Laissez-faire economics is an impossible pipe dream and Germany
> proved it. Taken to it's natural end, you get Germany's pre-WWII
> out-of-control rapid inflation where soon it takes millions of
> dollars just to make a basic grocery run.
Rather than attempt to demonstrate that Germany, by itself, has been
about as historically Laissez-faire as Stalin, or to point out that
the Kaiser had already established intrusive government regulation
and the welfare state long before WW1, I will instead point you to
the one huge error in your argument that makes arguing the rest of it
pointless:
Inflation is caused by governments printing money.
The reason for the Great Inflation was the German government's attempt
to print enough paper money to pay off the crushing reparations that
were imposed after WW1.
Do you really want to try and assert that a government printing
worthless paper money is somehow "laissez-faire"?
If so, you are in dire need of a dictionary. Or better yet, a book on
the subject:
Economic Freedom and Interventionism, Chapter 18:
Inflation And You
http://www.mises.org/efandi/ch18.asp
"It has been asserted that Nazism is the fruit of the vast German
inflation of 1923. That is not quite correct. It would be more
correct to say that the great inflation and the Nazi scourge both
derived from the mentalities and the doctrines that long dominated
German public opinion. The State, which the German socialist
Ferdinand Lassalle had already proclaimed as god, was supposed to be
able to achieve anything. The omnipotent State was credited with the
magic power of unlimited spending without any burden on the
citizenry. Money, said the German "monetary cranks," is a creature of
the State; there is no harm in issuing infinite quantities of paper
currency."
If this really is what you think laissez-faire capitalism entails, no
wonder you argue against it. I would too.
Now, if invoking Godwin's Law means this thread is over, I am very
happy to be the one to do it. The economic ignorance that has been
demonstrated over the last week has been a nightmare of governmet run
public school all over again. And no one is listening to anyone else
when they are corrected, so why bother?
Curt-
- --
September 11th, 2001
The proudest day for gun control and central
planning advocates in American history
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